Studies on aerosol optical depth in biomass burning areas using satellite and ground-based observations

Biomass burning in the tropics is a source of trace gas fluxes and particul ate matter. During the last decade, the shifting cultivation practices have been increased in the tropical forest of Eastern Ghats, Andhra Pradesh, In dia. In order to quantify the fluxes emitted from the biomass burning due t o shifting cultivation practices, a field experiment has been conducted on February 16-25, 1999. The present study provides the variation of aerosol o ptical depth over the shifting cultivation areas of Rampa Revenue Division, Eastern Ghats using a sunphotometer in synchronism with satellite data. Op tical depth values increased up to 2.0 during the burning phase and then re turned to normal values (0.2-0.5). The atmospheric correction of the satell ite data using the optical depth values suggested improvement in the overal l contrast of the image and increase in the dynamic range of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values of various features in the image . (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.